About New York Tours is a tour guide service established in 1993 specializing in student and adult group tours.  We do not give the "Chamber of Commerce" tour but strive for much much more.  Our desire is to show and share our city in all its charm, diversity, and eccentricity.  We do not own our own vehicles or have regularly scheduled tours, but specialize in the following: 

STEP-ON GUIDE SERVICES - Our tourist guides meet you at your location and the ensuing tour is always customized, whether it be walking tours, bus tours, shopping, dining, whatever.  All our guides are experienced, mature, and reliable. 

                    COSTS:  Step-on guide service only (walking or coach)
                                        Half-Day (4 Hours)...............$185.00
                                        Full Day (8 hours).................$310.00

                               
AIRPORT TRANSFERS - We provide transportation to and from all major local airports.  We meet yu with coach driver and tour guide, or just coach and driver.  For groups this form of transportation is usually more economical and always more convenient than taxis, car services, and public transportation.

                 
                                     

VEHICLE CHARTERS - We do not directly own vehicles but arrange for charters of any duration, but with a four hour minimum.  Vehicles range in size from pedicabs to 85 passenger doubledeckers. 


               
                                                       

ENTERTAINMENT-SHOPPING-DINING:  We know the City night and day and can arrange tour tickets and/or reservations to the best New York has to offer.  Want to shop?  We'll show you where and bring you there.  A particular strength of our agency is a thorough knowledge New York's diverse restaurants and markets.  Any purchase of tickets and/or reservations requires notice, full prepayment, and a small surcharge.  Most tickets are non-refundable.

                                        MAIL BAG
"N.S. here, one of the teachers from Manor School, Dublin, Ireland that you brought on a guided tour of New York recently.  Once again it was the highlight of our trip and we wanted to thank you for that.  The girls had a ball and are the envy of all their classmates here!!"

"I thought I'd let you know some of the feedback from our group after receiving their rating sheets.  The responses were extremely positive, especially regarding your guide work.  They enjoyed getting off the beaten track, especially the Lower East Side.  I'm sure very few groups get to gorge themselves on knishes, dill picklles, and egg creams from that historic area.  Mazeltov!!  - L.P., Winnipeg, Manitoba

"Again THANKS for all the support and guidance you gave my students while in New York...The way my students are talking, we may just want to plan another trip this fall."  T.S., Oregon, WI.

"Just a brief note to thank you for the help, courtesy (and knowledge) during our recent visit to New York.  The students are still talking about the tour - and you!!"    J.B., Swansea, Wales

"I cannot thank you enough for such a perfect day-everyone wanted to know when we were going to do it again.  I appreciate all the hard  work you put into it for us-it truly showed by your performance.  When you have 55 people on a bus and not one complains about anything- it's hard to believe!"                 M.E.I., Waterbury, CT.

                                    ABOUT NEW YORK TOURS
                                 47-34 Vernon Boulevard
                                      Long Island City, NY 11101
                                  Telephone/Fax:  718-937-8804

             PLANNING A TOUR?  HELPFUL LINKS
                                


            


                             
                                 

                                  

Baseball season is back and all fans owe a debt of gratitude to New York City,  as most of the rules of the modern game were developed here, some by necessity.  The story goes:
     In the early 1840s Alexander Joy Cartwright, an engineer in his early twenties and member of the Knickerbocker Volunteer Fire Brigade  organized the members into a team to play a stick-and-ball game that was to evolve into present-day baseball.  The game had many years before been imported from England.  Depending on the area of England it was called "rounders," "feeder," or "base ball."  It was largely the poor man's version of cricket - played in a few hours by the working class rather than many hours or even days as was the case with upper-class cricket.  It was played much like cricket - on an open field with no boundaries or foul lines. In the United States the game was most commomly known as "town ball."  In New York Cartwright's team played on  a large vacant area, roughly from what is now 23rd Street and 5th Avenue to 34th Street and 5th Avenue.
     However, in 1845 the City decided to make a formal park, now Madison Square, from 23rd Street to 26th Street, and allow building from 26th to 34th.  Cross streets were cleared and their ball field became much smaller, necessitating changing the game to adjust to more cramped quarters and perhaps to avoid being run over by a horse and carriage.   In September, 1845 the Manhattan Knickerbockers were more formally organized and new game rules written.  There were 20, including:
    1.  Four bases laid out in a 90 foot square.
    2.  Foul balls were invented, those balls hit outside the first or third base lines.
    3.  There were to be three "hands out" per inning.
    4.  Teams were to play an equal number of "hands" or innings.
    5.  If the "striker" missed three pitches he was out. 
    6.  Throwing at a runner was prohibited. 
    7.  If the striker hit the ball and it was caught on the fly or first bounce he was out.
    8.  Players were to bat in their regular turn. 
    9.  All disputes and differences were to be settled by an Umpire - no appeals.  The Umpire was also
        responsible for keeping written game records.
    10.  A runner could not be put out when a balk was made by the pitcher.
    11.  The ball was to be pitched, not thrown, for the bat.   

     The rules came to be known as the Knickerbocker Rules and the game - the New York Game.  Cartwright's codification was the beginning of baseball as our national pastime.  The adddition of foul lines was perhaps the most important innovation as the game could now become a spectator sport.                 

     The Knickerbocker  club played a few games under the new  rules before the Winter of 1845, but by Spring landscaping of the new park had progressed to such an extent that they were forced to find a new field. 
They chose the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, NJ, just across the Hudson River.  However, they were forced to pay rent, $75.00 per year for changing rooms and a field.  Each player had to contribute to the rental, which meant formalizing the roster to keep records, another first.  The first "official" recorded baseball game, with written lineups, records, and Knickerbocker rules is said to have been played on June 19, 1846 between the Manhattan Knickerbockers and the New York Nine.  Actually, it was an intrasquad game.  Cartwright had organized his players into two teams in order to have a game.  The Knickerbockers lost to the Nine in four innings 23-1.  Cartwright was the umpire and fined one player 6 cents for cursing.     

     The game is indeed old.  The first known written  reference, then called stoolball, was in a 1330 poem by William Pagula in which he recommended that the game be forbidden in churchyards.  "Bats & bares and such play
                                                                                                                                           Out of churche-yarde put away"

                                                            

ABOUT ABNER DOUBLEDAY - "INVENTOR OF BASEBALL"

     A.G. Spalding, born in 1850, was a great pitcher during his baseball career, later founded the sporting goods firm that still bears his name, and also published "Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide."  He held maximal power in shaping all facets of the game, including its history.  In 1907 he set up a commission to investigate the origins of  "America's pastime."  It appears he felt that a national pastime must be indegenous in origin. 
     He based the present-day myth on one letter from Abner Graves, a Colorado mining engineer, stating that Doubleday had in 1839 interrupted a marbles game behind a Cooperstown tailor shop to draw a diagram of a field, explain the rules, and designate its name - "base ball." 
     Abner Doubleday was born in 1819 at Ballston Spa, NY, a town approximately 70 miles northeast of Cooperstown.  He later became a captain of the Union artillery and had actually given the first orders to return fire after the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter that started the Civil War.  He later served with distinction at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg.  He apparently became a childhood hero of Spalding. 
     Spalding ignored much evidence to the contrary, collected over three years, in favor of that one letter about his childhood hero.  He was now not only a military hero but a creator!  Spalding stated:

          "Perhaps in the years to come, in view of the hundreds of thousands of people who are devoted to baseball,
            and the millions who will be, Abner Doubleday's fame will rest evenly, if not quite as much, upon the fact
            that he was its inventor......as upon his brilliant and distinguished career as an officer in the Federal Army."

   The Doubleday baseball story is a creation myth and his true distinction as a military officer has been forgotten. 
           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

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